Museums are not normally presenting the works on the walls as provocations to work. It's more like going to a Jacuzzi.

What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.

Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

Art-making is just another part of the consciousness industry.

There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis.

When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that.

Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.